For large developers looking at North Chicago projects like Sheridan Crossing, or homeowners seeking to improve their houses, the city is crafting a Unified Development Ordinance to make those tasks easier.
Taylor Wegrzyn, the city’s director of economic and community development, said North Chicago is starting to take steps to create a comprehensive development ordinance to put more than 50 years of zoning and subdivision regulations into one law, removing everything that might be obsolete.
“We’re clarifying and modernizing the city’s rules and methods of organizing them,” Wegrzyn said. “The current zoning code has more than 100 amendments to it. It’s time to condense and modernize it. We have to reorganize it into something you can make sense of.”
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Wegrzyn said the 16-month project starts with listening to the community’s stakeholders, like its businesses both large and small; other governmental entities at the state, county, and local levels; schools; the U.S. Navy; and members of the general public like Delano McCrory.
A North Chicago resident who works for the U.S. Postal Service, McCrory was able to let consultants and city officials know his personal thoughts as well as ways to ensure people’s mail is more secure.
McCrory was one of dozens of people who got a preview of what the Unified Development Ordinance might contain during an open house Wednesday in North Chicago, where the city collected ideas from those in attendance.
“I told them about cluster boxes,” McCrory said, referring to a group of mailboxes contained in one place for multiple-unit dwellings like apartments or planned unit developments. “They can be locked,” he added, distinguishing them from older receptacles on single-family homes.
Liz Nelson, the associate director of advocacy for Connections for the Homeless, was busy placing colored dots on different posters designed to let the public give its opinions on different zoning possibilities. She said she had a single goal — more affordable housing.
“Every community in Lake County needs more affordable housing,” Nelson said. “There is not enough of it. New construction needs to designate a percentage of its units to be affordable and indistinguishable from the outside.”
North Chicago Mayor Leon Rockingham Jr. said in an email Thursday the ordinance is about more than rewriting and modernizing codes. It requires a contemplative approach as different ideas are expressed. It is a forward-looking document.
“If we work together, we can create regulations that encourage investment, protect our neighborhoods and create opportunities for our residents,” he said. “The (ordinance) isn’t simply about rewriting our development regulations — it is about creating the framework for North Chicago’s next chapter.”
Once ideas are received from city officials, the public and all other stakeholders, Wegrzyn said the consultant assisting with the project — Michigan-based McKenna Associates — will compile the information and analyze it along with the existing relevant ordinances.
Kyle Mucha, a principal planner with McKenna, said the company will take the entirety of the comments and suggestions from all sources, study the existing zoning and subdivision ordinances as well as other relevant aspects of the city code, and put an initial draft of the ordinance together.
With the city divided into zones for different types of development, Mucha said they will include places for single-family homes, multiple-dwelling units, neighborhood businesses, general businesses, various types of manufacturing, offices, and government-owned property.
With a diverse industrial base from small manufacturers to multinational corporations like Abbott and AbbVie, schools including Rosalind Franklin University, and government-owned property from City Hall to Naval Station Great Lakes, Wegrzyn said city officials are giving everyone a chance to participate. The naval base does not fall under the ordinance.
While the current ordinances are written in smaller type, Kevin Garcia, another principal planner with McKenna, said when they complete the initial draft of the ordinance for review, it will be easier to read. Graphics may be used.
“Why try to design words rather than graphics when graphics do a better job,” Garcia said.
Once the initial draft is complete, Mucha said it will go through a series of reviews before it is complete and ready for a vote of approval from the North Chicago City Council. The Planning and Zoning Commission will also give it a look.
Some of the items that will likely be removed from the existing code are those related to lead pipes, regulations on wagon wheel makers, asbestos factories, airplane manufacturing and a variety of other possibilities. Mucha said they will likely all be grouped under general manufacturing.
“A Humvee manufacturer may want to be near the naval base,” Mucha said. “That’s why the uses will be more generalized.”